PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Winner - Home is Where the GIFT Is

This year PRSA partnered with Inside PR, a weekly podcast about public relations and social media, hosted by Gini Dietrich in Chicago, Joseph Thornley in Ottawa and Martin Waxman in Toronto and produced by Thornley Fallis to get behind the scenes interviews with several Silver Anvil finalists.

This year the Gateway Center and Edelman received a Silver Anvil Award for their campaign, "Home is Where the GIFT Is." Inside PR's Dietrich interviewed Taryn Solomon, account supervisor, Crisis, Issues Management and Public Affairs at Edelman.

Ranked the fourth meanest city toward the homeless, Atlantans have traditionally turned a blind eye to the city’s most glaring problem: homelessness. When asked to recognize a local homeless center donation, Edelman knew more could be done in the fight to evolve chronic homelessness into self-sufficiency. Leveraging the event to launch a broader campaign, Edelman developed The Gateway GIFT Project: Generating Involvement in Fundamental Transition to drive corporate and community engagement during the center’s greatest time of need. Generating widespread stakeholder support and record online donations, the resulting program galvanized a united assault on chronic homelessness - forever changing lives and a community in need.

When asked about why Edeleman chose to take this project on, Solomon said, "Edelman has a really strong emphasis on global citizenship worldwide and they encourage each office to find an organization that they're passionate about and one of the initiatives we focus on is the Gateway Center. We do research and looked at various issues that are in the community that affect all of us, that affect us as we're walking to and from work, we look at what affects our clients, and unfortunately homelessness is one of the toughest issues and nobody wants to talk about it. It's not sexy and it's something very real to everyone."

For more pre-ceremony footage of Edelman before their big win, check out the video interview.